WaPo: What Happened when Brooklyn tried to Integrated its Middle Schools

[Anonymous]

Surprised no one has posted this yet since it's very relevant to many of the threads already on here. The article gives some real life examples of what and how socio-economic re-districting works and what the results are:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/11/15/what-happened-when-brooklyn-tried-integrate-its-middle-schools/?arc404=true

[Anonymous]

In Brooklyn, many families, affluent and poor, were happy with their placements when they were announced last spring. But 45 children were assigned to Charles O. Dewey, the middle school Sophie is attending, who had not included it anywhere on their ranked list of choices. Enrollment figures indicate most of those students did not show, moving to private or charter schools, or perhaps leaving the district. The percent of kids from priority groups enrolled in Dewey’s sixth grade class went from 95 percent last year to 92 percent this year.

Some people will go where they are assigned, at least at first and give it a chance.

Many people will refuse to attend an assigned school that they didn't want at all. They move, go private, homeschool, whatever.

The anecdotes provided in this article are encouraging.

System-wide, it will take a few years to for the picture to start to become clear.

[Anonymous]

I think most don't mind the idea of busing in kids. It's busing out kids that they don't like.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think most don't mind the idea of busing in kids. It's busing out kids that they don't like.

Oh I bet everyone would be mad as fire if the government bused in too many of the wrong kind of kids to their kids school. Perfectly justified, too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think most don't mind the idea of busing in kids. It's busing out kids that they don't like.

Oh I bet everyone would be mad as fire if the government bused in too many of the wrong kind of kids to their kids school. Perfectly justified, too.

Yeah, just look at what happened in Virginia in the 1950s and 60s, people were horrified.

[Anonymous]

So it seems like the good news is that it gave alot of poorer and disadvantaged students access to higher performing schools.

The bad news is that almost every wealthy kid who was zoned to a lower performing school opted out. So long run, unless you can figure out a way to get wealthy families to willingly go to these schools, all you are doing is creating greater competition for limited seats in good schools while not actually improving the educational opportunities at poorer schools.

So how do you actually create buy-in? Move a very large cohort of wealthier students with the hope that enough of them will go? Create specialty programs? Only offer certain sought-after programs at these schools? I don't know what it would take.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think most don't mind the idea of busing in kids. It's busing out kids that they don't like.

Oh I bet everyone would be mad as fire if the government bused in too many of the wrong kind of kids to their kids school. Perfectly justified, too.

This was a lottery system. People rank their choices and what are termed "priority populations" have greater weight given to their choices. I think NYC has some elementaries that determine attendance by boundaries.

[Anonymous]

The only negative I saw in that article was the bigot who pulled his kid from school because he assumes poor kids are dumb and unwilling to work hard. The school is probably better off without his family, though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The only negative I saw in that article was the bigot who pulled his kid from school because he assumes poor kids are dumb and unwilling to work hard. The school is probably better off without his family, though.

Did you read the part about the mom having to accompany the girls on the subway. That the school bus did not come for four days?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only negative I saw in that article was the bigot who pulled his kid from school because he assumes poor kids are dumb and unwilling to work hard. The school is probably better off without his family, though.

Did you read the part about the mom having to accompany the girls on the subway. That the school bus did not come for four days?

While not good...once the problem was fixed, it was fixed. It is not a reason to end the program.

[Anonymous]

Seemed like the article was mostly about the social adjustments that the kids were making and how the parents were handling it. There wasn’t much yet on how the students were faring academically in the new environments. As such, it is a story that cries out for a follow up in a year or two before anyone tries to assert it’s a relevant precedent for any other jurisdiction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Seemed like the article was mostly about the social adjustments that the kids were making and how the parents were handling it. There wasn’t much yet on how the students were faring academically in the new environments. As such, it is a story that cries out for a follow up in a year or two before anyone tries to assert it’s a relevant precedent for any other jurisdiction.

Yeah, more classroom details needed. Are kids tracked, for example? It’s plain as day that kids from advantaged backgrounds in schools mostly of that type move through material faster. It’ll be interesting to see how a more diverse set of backgrounds plays with the pace of instruction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only negative I saw in that article was the bigot who pulled his kid from school because he assumes poor kids are dumb and unwilling to work hard. The school is probably better off without his family, though.

Did you read the part about the mom having to accompany the girls on the subway. That the school bus did not come for four days?

Have you never seen the threads here at the start of each school year with people complaining about buses that arrived incredibly late or never showed at all while school systems work out kinks in the system?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only negative I saw in that article was the bigot who pulled his kid from school because he assumes poor kids are dumb and unwilling to work hard. The school is probably better off without his family, though.

Did you read the part about the mom having to accompany the girls on the subway. That the school bus did not come for four days?

Have you never seen the threads here at the start of each school year with people complaining about buses that arrived incredibly late or never showed at all while school systems work out kinks in the system?

Something very relevant to DC is that there are no school buses. That’s one reason people favor “neighborhood” schools.

[Anonymous]

There are no academic results yet, the forced diversity only started last year or this year. And most overperformers assigned to underperforming schools left the system.

As for the rest:

Have the underperformers now become more proficient in math and English (or whatever else subject matter is tested)?

Are the overperformers still over performing to the same degree?